


Hold my Hand

by Starbuck09256



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, MSR, Multi, season 4, some ansgt, up to redux 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26780698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starbuck09256/pseuds/Starbuck09256
Summary: Cancer arc. Why they were so touchy feely then.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Hold my Hand

She isn’t sure when it starts sometime in those first few years they start to walk after dinner. Not a run like they would do in the morning but a walk around the block or down the street. They usually talk about the case, sometimes plans that Scully has for the weekend. Sometimes Mulder talks about downed ufo’s that Scully tries to prove are russian subs. Either way the walks give them both a sense of peace about everything. They help Scully feel less guilty about drinking almost all of Mulder’s chocolate shake. This night she is bundled up and the cold air swirls the soft snow around them. She starts to slip and Mulder catches her, he grins shyly helping her up, but she takes his hand interlacing their fingers and holds his arm. He chuckles and keeps her close. The next night as they are finally wrapping up the case an early flight beckons them. She grabs his hand right out the door. He interlaces their fingers, it’s so nice. The next day when they fly home and she falls asleep against his shoulder he thinks of her warm hand in his. When the next case takes them to a warmer climate he feels a sadness knowing she won’t take his hand. But as they walk down the street to the neighborhood diner, the falling leaves of gold and red he reaches to her taking her hand. She stops, and he chides himself for being forward. But then she gives him that cute shy smile and squeezes his hand continuing on. 

Then everything changes first there is Jerse and his anger. Their fights aren’t the same intellectual battles they used to be, she has done the research and looked into his ideas. She comes now armed with her own articles, her normal arguments now fueled with even more facts. He isn’t mad that she has found more information, hell if anything he is more impressed by her every day, but now it seems she disregards some things he says, and in truth he does the same. They aren’t listening like they used to, they are waiting for their turn to make their own case. They stop holding hands on walks, stop touching as much as before, and he misses it, and so does she. The reassurance about what they mean to one another is lost in the silence. They have lost the path together, he feels betrayed by her actions, and she feels angry that he thinks he can lay claim to her when all he has done is brushed the chance of them together off. 

As she starts to wonder what she really wants fate twists it's cruel head at her. Reminds her of the women she met not so long ago and the warning they prophesied. Here she is in a big fluffy robe and hair matted to her sweat slick skin. She writes the words that she has wanted to say, that she loves him but in the elegant way he tells her that he loves her. Not forthcoming but as a truth that has always been there. She’s not sure when she hasn’t loved him. When they first met maybe but then he heard her out, listened to her ideas, made her challenge herself and basked in the reverence of her intellect. Mulder and his tantalizing cases and far fetched theories that somehow prove right. He’s there again telling her not to give up and in her soul she knows he won’t. That if there was ever a chance at redemption for her, he would find it and hand it to her at the last second. He holds her hand now, in cars on planes. Kisses her palm rubs her shoulders and back at the end of the day. But they don’t walk as much, she is so exhausted from chemo and the illness that ravages her body. She no longer steals his milkshake or sneaks a fry. She pushes around the sad lettuce on her plate and can’t even stomach finishing a full cup of coffee. 

He starts to worry more and more as blood seeps out of her nose, she turns in at 7 instead of 9. When he notices that she stops packing her running clothes in her overnight bag. He sees her suits hanging off her too thin body, the deep creases in her cheeks. His strong capable friend withering away behind a clever concealer and fake smile hidden behind wadded blood stained tissues. He knows what he has done, the things he has taken for granted in his life. How he has shouted at the heavens when he could have been protecting people from hell right here on the ground. How his talent and relentlessness has been focused on the intangible when reality is right in front of him screaming about injustice. Now he doesn’t see the clouds or the skies, he sees tears from eyes deep as the sea. He sees blood the same crimson as her hair, he hears her staggering breath after she chases down a suspect, he feels her falling asleep beside him in the middle of the day and knows how desperately she wishes to be awake. To bask in these last few months with him. His soldier, while they fight still seeking out answers and hope against the world that a cure is out there, he feels her slipping away from him. He’s never felt a fear like it in his life. Not when Samantha went over the bridge, not when Scully shot him. Not when he was sure both of them would die in that shower with those psycho cult members. Now he can’t help himself and doesn’t want to. He starts to grab her hand, the cold clammy fingers aren’t like before. He starts to stay far too late in her room so he can fall asleep beside her. She is too tired to bother trying to kick him out. He brings her small coffees and extra water, tissues and trinkets. Calls them a birthday gift and even wraps one. He regrets never celebrating her birth, for how could you forget to celebrate the birth of the person who finally made you feel alive? 

When he breaks into her place finds her stripping in the dark. He does want to see, wants to see all of her before she is gone. But he doesn’t want it like this and he knows she doesn’t either. He sleeps next to her that night wraps himself tightly around her and she burrows herself even closer in his arms. He finds himself kissing her hair with tears running down his face, he traces the red marks on her paler than normal skin and she kisses him with chapped lips that still tingle. They don’t do more but hold each other kissing softly while they talk. He admits to being in love with her, she admits that she knows and wishes they had been stronger for each other earlier. Stronger enough to believe that they could make it work with their own work. 

He tells her how he hated seeing her in the hospital in Philadelphia. She tells him that she cried out his name when she was with Jerse. His body deflates and he squeezes her tight. In the morning when she goes to the hearing he gives her a long kiss goodbye. He bites his lip as he hears the door click and moves to go through every file they have all the way back to 92. 

When she doesn’t come home after the hearing he starts to freak out. What happened? Did she change her mind about the plan? Was kissing her at the end of it all really the way to get her to leave? To expose them? Are they on their way here now to charge him with murder? With falsified evidence? With a variety of other charges in which he is most certainly guilty. But then no one comes back, not even her and true panic sets in. Did they already arrest her? Is she sitting in a prison cell already with blood leaking out of her nose as she stares at a wall contemplating her own demise? He calls the only people who can help him, and after 20 minutes what little breath he had left in him evaporates into her home. The home she may never ever come back too.


End file.
